a seemingly reasonable, but unproven, idea based upon known facts -- often an idea to be tested

The study will test the hypothesis that a good marriage is more important than a higher income when measuring happiness.

He hypothesized the existence of Pluto before its discovery.

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the hypothesis here proven may be described simply in the following terms: artificially increased intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase.

Daniel Keyes -- Flowers for Algernon

["short man’s complex" or "unresolved Oedipal conflict"] Although there may be some truth in both hypotheses, this sort of posthumous off-the-rack psychoanalysis is a dubious, highly speculative enterprise that inevitably demeans and trivializes the absent analysand.

Jon Krakauer -- Into the Wild

In a letter to a friend he wrote, "I began my adult life with the hypothesis that it would be possible to become a Stone Age native."

Jon Krakauer -- Into the Wild

Rosellini appeared to accept the failure of his hypothesis with equanimity.

something that may not be true, but that is temporarily treated as true to advance a discussion or to further investigation

For the purpose of discussion, let’s accept that the hypothesis that she is guilty is true. What would we have expected her to do after the incident?

Hypothetically speaking, if the company did downside and you lost your job, what would you do?

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Instead of talking about her specific situation, I asked her to consider a hypothetical situation with similar circumstances. It helped her to keep emotions under control as she thought about everyone’s point-of-view.

Hypothetically speaking, if the stock market is efficient, we would expect indexed mutual funds to perform as well as managed mutual funds, but with less overhead.

Actually, there are several options for your hypothetical future recovery scenario, should we proceed any further.

"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added.

John Green -- Paper Towns

Hypothetically speaking.

Rick Riordan -- The Mark of Athena

That’s just a hypothetical reason.

John Green -- Looking for Alaska

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I’d been speaking hypothetically about moving to New York a year early.

Jeannette Walls -- The Glass Castle

You and I both know how hypothetical this solution is.

James Dashner -- The Kill Order

He started talking a lot about his hypothetical new bird book, and whenever the subject came up I did my best to encourage him and sound interested.

Ransom Riggs -- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Camila’s business plan for a Victoria’s Secret competitor, for example, was entertaining but highly hypothetical and totally unrelated to what she might be doing when she got out of this human warehouse in five years.

Piper Kerman -- Orange Is the New Black

She offered hypothetical situations that might come to pass and asked how they’d be handled by the staff and director; she asked how many times Gabby would be turned in the course of a day, so as to prevent bedsores.

Nicholas Sparks -- The Choice

"Hypothetically" "I’m saying that, hypothetically, I wouldn’t do it."

Patrick Rothfuss -- The Name of the Wind

But that was hypothetical.

Holly Goldberg Sloan -- Counting by 7s

"Then I’d say whatever you’re involved in is way beyond a hypothetical."

David Baldacci -- Zero Day

This hypothetical optimism gave the poor girl a pang.

Henry James -- Washington Square

Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical; since he wasn’t a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife’s rights would be if he WERE.

Edith Wharton -- The Age of Innocence

The twin breathing orifices on either cheek-if those fluted, basalt curves could be called cheeks-emitted the faintest of whistles as Karellen’s hypothetical lungs laboured in the thin air of Earth.

Arthur C. Clarke -- Childhood’s End

Then their eyes met, and they shook hands like cronies in a tavern, and Jude saw the absurdity of quarrelling on such a hypothetical subject, and she the silliness of crying about what was written in an old book like the Bible.

Thomas Hardy -- Jude the Obscure

"So the D-6 in use on the deceased’s boat could have— hypothetically, since it was identical—made a perfect spare for the defendant’s batteries?"

David Guterson -- Snow Falling on Cedars

"A hypothetical case," Eve began and waited for Mira’s nod.

J.D. Robb -- Naked in Death

If it had been found, they would have checked everyone in his hypothetical circle, wouldn’t they?

Stephen King -- Misery

If the hypothetical man was friendly, and if she was anxious to get her son home, she might have accepted.

Stephen King -- Cujo

Mrs. Grose looked straight out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do.

Henry James -- The Turn of the Screw

But it’s a hypothetical question.

Robert A. Heinlein -- Tunnel In the Sky

… On the basis of Mo’s on-the-spot evaluation of that hypothetical profile-which he hours later suspected was no more hypothetical than Campbell’s soup-an innocent amnesiac was nearly blown away in a government ambush on New York’s Seventy-first Street.

Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Ultimatum

All the talk about dolphins, all my reading, speculating, including a long philosophical dissertation on their hypothetical dreamsongs as a religio-diagogical form of Indus, for what?

Roger Zelazny -- My Name is Legion

Oh well, this is purely hypothetical at this point, anyway.

Stephenie Meyer -- New Moon

Some of you have probably jumped ahead and are already at the place where you realize this happened to us, and I’m not just rattling on hypothetically, so good on ya!

James Patterson -- Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

I assure you, not a single piece of hypothetical data has been used for this ’cartoon,’ as you call it.

Ted Dekker -- Red: The Heroic Rescue

For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the Enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it: resignation to present and actual suffering, even where that suffering consists of fear, is far easier and is usually helped by this direct action.

C.S. Lewis -- The Screwtape Letters

Let’s say, for example, I am trying to teach you how not to hide inside of lies, hypothetically of course," she said with a wink.

William P. Young -- The Shack

There were endless discussions during the afternoon college hours about the problem of dual loyalty—what sort of allegiance could an American Jew have toward a foreign Jewish state?—and invariably these arguments revolved around this hypothetical question: On what side would an American Jew fight should America ever declare war against a Jewish state? I always answered that the question was silly, America would never send Jews to fight against a Jewish state; during the Second World…

Chaim Potok -- The Chosen

Their cosmography was but an extension of the largely hypothetical geography of the tune.

Dante Alighieri -- Dante’s Inferno

The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the same till then deemed slightly hypothetical had a great effect upon the spectators.

Thomas Hardy -- The Mayor of Casterbridge

If so, I decline to be witness at the trial ……What was the last hypothetical devil mentioned?’

Rudyard Kipling -- Kim

This hypothetical computer is soon going to send you a hypothetical email.

Stieg Larsson -- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Martin and Janice aren’t hypothetical examples dreamed up by some marketing department.

Sophie Kinsella -- Confessoins of a Shopaholic

Hypothetically.

Ted Dekker -- BoneMan’s Daughters

It’s supposed to be easier to suffer for hypothetical people too, for Hecubas.

Saul Bellow -- The Adventures of Augie March

…bags, about three promenades a day, about—it was difficult to say, difficult to enumerate all the things people down there did not know about; but the notion that Joachim, after having spent more than a year and a half up here, would now be living among such ignorant people, that notion, which applied only to Joachim—and merely from a great distance and only quite hypothetically to himself—so confused Hans Castorp that he closed his eyes and dismissed it with a gesture of his hand.

Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain

Perry Mason, A Not-so-hypothetical Indictment, and had been in progress for as long as the TV show had been on the air.

Thomas Pynchon -- The Crying of Lot 49

During our talk I made a hypothetical statement that summed up my attitude toward God and the suffering in the world, a statement that stemmed from my knowledge of life as I had lived, seen, felt, and suffered it in terms of dread, fear, hunger, terror, and loneliness.

Richard Wright -- Black Boy

What’s more, by your own account, it’s likely the construction of this hypothetical tunnel was never completed in the first place.

Christopher Paolini -- Inheritance

I believe, sir, that we have had this conversation, here in this N cry Hall, albeit then in a hypothetical context.

Geraldine Brooks -- Year of Wonders

She looked like a tourist who’d asked for directions to a place she thought was simple enough to get to only to hear a series of hypothetical turns, alleys, one-way streets.

ZZ Packer -- Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

And when X is between 1 and 3, thepopulation gets bigger and then it stays stable like this (and these graphs are hypothetical, too).